The Nexus 6 is finally live on the Australian Google Play store for a distinctly top-tier price of $869 for the 32GB and $929 for the 64GB. This is no more than you’d expect to pay for a Galaxy S5 or other flagship device, but we’d had hopes that the Nexus 6 would at least be a tiny bit more wallet-friendly than the competition.
Still, it’s certainly no more costly than the GS5 was when it launched, and the similarly-specced Galaxy Note 4 debuted recently for $949 with 32GB of on-board storage. So perhaps $869 for a 6-inch powerhouse isn’t too bad after all.
Unfortunately there's still no timing up for when you can order, or even expect to get the Nexus 6 delivered Down Under. Currently the Play store simply says "coming soon", but at least we know what we can be expected to fork out.
About the Nexus 6
The Nexus 6 is the flagship device for Android 5.0. Being a full-priced, no-sacrifices handset, it represents a significant step away from its predecessors. The Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 were astoundingly affordable handsets compared to what they offered, but they did make some hardware sacrifices. The Nexus 4 didn’t have 4G at a time when much of its competition did. The Nexus 5 was a bit closer to being totally top of the line, except it sported a lacklustre camera.
The Nexus 6, on paper at least, is possibly the most powerful, heavily-specced phone to date. At worst it has little competition for that title. It rocks a huge 6 inch display with 2560 x 1440 resolution – the same impressive res found on the LG G3 and Galaxy Note 4.
The quad-core 2.7GHz Snapdragon 805 processor is one of the most powerful on the market and is backed up by 3GB of RAM. The Graphics processor is an Adreno 420, once again better than or equal to any other handset.
The camera is a 13MP shooter, up from the 8MP on the Nexus 5. Granted, megapixels don’t tell you much, and Motorola – the company that actually makes the Nexus 6 – isn’t exactly renowned for great image capture. Time will tell if it’s going to be a contender, but with any luck we’ll see improvement.
Storage options are 32GB or 64GB. Unfortunately we’re once again left with a Nexus without a microSD slot for expanding that further.
Put all of this together and the Nexus 6 is a big, beautiful piece of tech. If you’re after something cheaper, or more sensibly-sized, then you can still pick the Nexus 5 up for around $400, or you might consider the Motorola Moto X, which is basically a slimmed-down version of the Nexus 6.
Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
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